


Once, Maybe Twice in a Lifetime

by Ally147



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP Time Travel Fest 2016, Mild Smut, Time Travel, age gap, kind of, magic lake portals, malevolent mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 16:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8761363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally147/pseuds/Ally147
Summary: It’s still. Placid. An unbroken sheet of glass rippling with low, late afternoon sunlight. Nothing at all to be afraid of, really.Stupid that she still is, after all these years.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I completely forgot about this fic. My bad. This was written for the 2016 HP Time Travel Fest. I hope you'll enjoy it.
> 
> Many thanks to Kanames Harisen for the beta. She truly is a jewel.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I own no part of the Harry Potter enterprise.

It’s still. Placid. An unbroken sheet of glass rippling with low, late afternoon sunlight. Nothing at all to be afraid of, really.

Stupid that she still is, after all these years.

Stupid that Hermione still has nightmares of being held under the surface of the Black Lake. Oh, sure, Viktor rescued her in the end, and she had been in some sort of stasis the entire time so she doesn’t remember a whole lot of it. But Hermione isn’t a strong swimmer. Not all that fond of any large body of water, really. Some nights still she bursts awake with gasps so loud they wake her dorm-mates, clawing at her throat for the ribbons of seaweed curled around her neck, coughing up water that pooled in her lungs, kicking and screaming at the force tugging her deeper to let her go.

She can’t leave like this. Her final class was only an hour ago. She should be in her dorm, packing to leave tomorrow like everyone else. But the lake… she’s not sure she can leave without conquering it. After seven years at Hogwarts, she’s conquered everything else: bigotry, bullying, more injuries than she could put a name to, learning the entire language of magic from the ground up. She can handle a lake. 

“I’m Gryffindor,” she whispers. “I can do this.”

Hermione slips off her shoes, then her socks, and reaches out with tentative toes for the shoreline.

The water is like ice, the silty floor slimy to stand on. It’s clearer than it appears on first glance; Hermione looks down sees her transparent feet glowing back up at her through the haze of green. She hitches her skirt up a little higher and takes another step in.

The reeds in the shallows swish and tangle about her ankles. If she closes her eyes and ignores the cold, it feels almost like Crookshanks, when he ducks and weaves around her legs.

It’s not so bad, she decides. She’s getting used to the temperature now, and with the relative warm about her, it’s quite nice. She takes another step in, up to her knees. She drops her skirt and watches the hem fan out around her, darkening the edges a deep shade of charcoal.

Hermione sighs and ventures another step out, until the whole length of her legs is submerged. She laughs to herself as she skims her hands across the surface; what on earth had she possibly been worried about?

There’s a ripple in the water out the corner of her eye, gone as soon as she swivels her head towards it. One on her left, then another on her right. She thinks nothing of it. It’s not as though the lake is void of life, though she knows the population of mer-people dwell much farther out than where she’s standing, as does the fabled Giant Squid if the stories are to be believed, so it can’t be anything too large. She shakes her head; it was nothing. A fish coming to the surface, or maybe even a tiny bird.

But she sees it again. And again and again. The small fish must eat in swarms in the shallows, she thinks to herself, but the notion is far from convincing when the foam begins to thicken. Hermione takes a slow step backwards, but she’s surrounded on all sides. It moves closer and faster and multiplying until she’s bordered by a ring of vicious white foam. Hermione feels the first icy shards of fear pierce through her stomach as she lunges back, through the foam, for the rocky shoreline, where her wand is stowed in her shoe. 

But she isn’t fast enough. The water feels thicker around her, like molasses. She opens her mouth to scream as there’s a sharp, vicious tug on her ankle, jerking her beneath the surface. She gasps on grimy lake water that threatens to turn her nightmares into cold reality.

The pressure on her ankle is still there, harsh and sharp and stinging as it drags her deeper and deeper still, between valleys of underwater cliff-faces, through fields of flowing plants taller than two of her in height. Her ears pop and everything feels too heavy, like she’s being crushed beneath the weight of the world. Black spots encroach on her vision, and she’s certain in that moment that she is about to die.

There’s a void below her, darker than any dark she’s ever seen. The black spots begin to blanket her vision as the water starts to feel even colder than before as she’s dragged closer and closer to the void. She’s numb, unfeeling, and in that moment, entirely uncaring. The panic that coursed through her veins feels like a memory, in its place a bizarre sort of peace that comes with accepting the inevitable.

The last thing she sees before she lets go is a flash of jagged teeth and seaweed hair, glinting scales from a tail far too large to belong to a lake fish.

**XXX**

There’s a blinding light glaring at her beyond her closed eyes.

Is she dead? Is she in heaven?

Surely heaven wouldn’t be so cold. The shivers racking her body feel painful and violent.

Her eyes feel weighted shut. She can’t open them, but the higher parts of her consciousness stirring to wakefulness. She’s still cold, but there’s a warm body under hers, propping her torso up, and hands probing at her neck and wrists for a pulse she isn’t sure they’ll find.

Then it’s gone all too quick, slipping away in ebbs too fast for her to hold on to.

“Everyone back away!” a deep, commanding—familiar?—voice is saying, but it sounds like it’s coming from the opposite end of a tunnel, loud and far at the same time. “Crowley”—who on earth is Crowley?—“send a _Patronus_ to the nurse, and another to the Headmistress. Let them know that Hermione Granger is… somehow… alive.”

**XXX**

When she opens her eyes again, she’s warm at last, laying on a narrow bed in a small room, surrounding by a thin white curtain. A fire flickers somewhere nearby, suffusing the room with heat and comforting flickering light. Is it the Hospital Wing, perhaps? There’s something off about it. The linens aren’t the scratchy white she’s accustomed to, instead something softer, lighter, caressing her skin rather than cloaking it. The nurse she can see darting about certainly isn’t Madam Pomfrey, but there is something familiar about the woman, though Hermione doesn’t trust what her tired eyes are only gleaning in snatches.

There’s a figure, too, folded in on themselves on a too-small chair to her left. His head is ducked off to the side, propped-up on his shoulder, one knee bent up to his chest while the other long leg stretches outwards. There’s no mistaking the inimitable white-blond hair, soft and delicate as unicorn down—at least, so she’d heard described by the Slytherin girls.

He’s older. Too old. Impossibly so, with fine lines marking the outer edge of his eyes and lips. Hermione frowns and lifts the back of her hand. The skin there is as smooth as ever, so it’s not as though she’s been in some ridiculous, soap opera-esque coma for the past decade; how has he aged ten years when she hasn’t?

Hermione pushes herself up against the pillows to get a better look, wincing at the sharp stab of pain that lances its way over her midsection. Each breath in and out feels like tacks in her lungs; her throat burns with the effort to draw more air in, her chest screaming as it expands and contracts.

“M-Malfoy?” she croaks out.

The figure darts into alertness, grey eyes snapping to attention, legs falling with a dull thud to the polished floor. There is none of the Malfoy grace she’d been so accustomed to seeing over the years, and none of the pointed, smug youth she knows either.

His gaze roves over her face, lips parting and closing in turn with words unsaid. His jaw ripples as he finally settles on, “Miss Granger.”

Her brow furrows at his response; why so formal, respectful, even? His greetings, if they could be called that, had always been the same: rote acknowledgements of ‘Granger’ or ‘Mudblood’, or derisive comments about her hair or teeth. “What… happened?”

His thin lips quirk in a wry smile. “I could ask you the same thing, you know. We’re all quite curious as to what happened to you, how you got here.” He levels his gaze straight at her. “Who you really are.”

Hermione scowls at him. None of the remarkable memory that kept him just behind her in grades for most of their schooling lives, either. “You know who I am,” she snaps. “I’m Hermione Granger. Butt of all your jokes for the better part of six years.”

“Au contraire,” he says, stretching his arms high above his head. “You certainly look like one Miss Hermione Granger, but I have no proof that you are. After all, you don’t hold her wand, you’re young, and your arrival here—looking the way you do—is bound to… incite some people.”

She squints at him—surely she’s missed something from a larger image. “What on earth do you mean?”

He straightens in his seat and slips a hand beneath his cloak, to where she guesses his wand is stowed. “Who are you?” he asks. The tone of the question is even enough, but there’s the underlying hint of a threat that makes her skin ripple with goose-bumps.

She props herself up as best she can in the bed, turning her head in what she hopes is a convincing approximation of confidence. “I’m Hermione Granger, Malfoy! You know this!”

He removes the wand from his cloak and trains the point of it over her heart. A wave of cold washes over her, an icy hand clutching her insides. “What was the first insult I ever threw at you?”

Hermione’s mouth falls open, then closes again in turn. “You called me a jumped-up little Mudblood,” she tells him, turning the jibe up at the end like it’s a question, because why he’s opting to talk about their less-than-stellar history together when there’s so much else to be worried about, and while his wand is pointed straight at her, is beyond her.

He shakes his head. “Not that one, Granger. The first one, the one without the audience.”

Hermione gulps. She never thought he remembered that; she never thought that brief moment in the train car, when she’d been searching for Neville’s toad, had left any sort of impression on him at all. All the same, she scowls at the memory. “You called me silly for looking for a frog, no matter how many times I told you it was a toad, then invited me to sit with you while your friends went and fetched you lunch. But when I said no, you called me a prissy bitch.”

Malfoy lowers his wand with a small, tentative grin. “Miss Granger,” he says, pleasantly now, as he stows his wand away. “Welcome back.” 

She narrows her eyes at him, letting out a relieved breath. “Back from where, exactly?”

He shakes his head. “There is much to discuss, Miss Granger. At your bedside in the Hospital Wing isn’t the best place for this conversation.”

She looks around the room again, lingering over the stonework that looks much cleaner than last time she looked at it, and the unfamiliar portrait of Madam Pomfrey on the far side of the room that glances at her with an expression that wavers between curious and sympathetic. “This doesn’t look like the Hospital Wing.”

His lips are pressed into a thin line when her eyes find his again.

“There is likely going to be much you won’t recognise, Miss Granger.”

She glares at him. “You can’t make comments like that and expect me to stay quiet and complacent.”

He chuckles. “No, I suspect not.”

“So if you won’t tell me what’s happening, why you appear so much older, why everything is so incredibly _different_ , you can leave now.” She pauses, crossing her arms over her chest in a show of defiance. At his raised brow, and increasingly professor-ly expression, she tacks on, “Please.”

Malfoy expels a long breath, darting his eyes around the room as though the walls are going to chastise him, before he leans forward and says, almost too low for her to hear, “You’ve been missing—presumed dead—for a long time.”

There’s a slow beat of seconds before she manages to understand what he said—not because the words themselves are outlandish, but because they’re so utterly _impossible_. “A long time?” she repeats. “How long? I couldn’t have… it was mere hours ago. You have to believe me.”

“I believe you.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “The passage of time is supposed to be difficult to perceive when you’re experiencing it in a different way.”

“What are you trying to say, Malfoy?”

He draws a deep breath in and runs his hand through blond hair so askew she thinks he must have been tugging at it for hours now. “Miss Granger, it’s 2010.”

She feels like the weight of the world is pressing down on her chest all over again.

“2010,” she repeats. “T-twelve years…”

“You disappeared on the final day of the year, back in ninety-eight,” he explains, with the sort of patience and calm only a professor or parent would possess. “Potter and Weasley put out the call when you never returned for dinner that night. A search was conducted—many searches, in fact, from memory. Your shoes and wand were found by the side of the lake. The lake was searched, too, obviously, but there was no sign of you. There was no cooperation from the mer-people, either. It broke the truce that existed between us. You were assumed… it was thought you committed suicide.

“A few years later,” he goes on after drawing another heavy breath, “Potter and your parents established The Hermione Granger Fellowship, offering scholarships for Muggle borns. There’s a plaque up in Gryffindor Tower in your memory, another by the lake where your belongings were found. There’s also a—”

“Stop,” Hermione begs. “Just… please. No more.”

He lets out a low chuckle. “Don’t think everyone just moved on after you… disappeared. They certainly didn’t.”

“That wasn’t my concern.” She draws in a deep breath, rattling with unshed tears. “Everyone thought I was dead. They’d have… every right to move on.”

Malfoy looks like there’s something else he wants to say. Instead he shakes his head and asks, “Do you remember anything, Miss Granger? Anything at all?”

“Nothing of importance.” She shrugs. “I was standing in the lake, then all of a sudden I was pulled under by something and dragged towards this… the dark patch at the bottom.”

“Dark patch?” he repeats, pressing forward in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“There was a part of the lake, towards the very bottom, that was… blacker than ink. I was pulled into it. I think, now, it must have been some sort of portal, I suppose.”

Malfoy’s eyes are wide, glazed over. “Fascinating.”

“Quite.” There’s a beat of silence where he glances out the window and out at the glassy lake surface. Hermione snaps, “So you’re just going to leave it there?”

A vague hint of a smile changes his face. “I’m not certain what you would have us do? It would make for an intriguing study—a non-linear time portal is a fascinating concept I’m sure all the Unspeakables would be chomping at the bit to get a better look at—but it’s hardly worth the risk it would entail to get up close, to remove it or otherwise. No guarantee that it still exists in this time, either.”

“That’s comforting,” she mutters. “So, I’m stuck here with no way out?”

“You won’t be asked to leave the grounds,” he rushes to assure her, “if that’s your concern.”

“But what about Harry? Ron? My parents?” she questions with rising hysteria. “Shouldn’t they be told I’m all right? That I’m alive?”

Malfoy sighs. “Miss Granger, it’s a… delicate situation—”

“Stop that,” she snaps.

“Stop what?”

“Stop talking to me like I’m a child!”

He raises a pale brow at her. “You are a child, Miss Granger.”

“Oh, please!” She scoffs. “Our years at Hogwarts mean none of us have been children since we were twelve! And stop calling me ‘Miss Granger’! That isn’t how you know me at all.”

He sighs. “Things are different, Miss Granger. Twelve years have passed; I’ve aged. You haven’t.”

She wants to pull her hair out, lash out at his outrageous pale face, _scream_ until she’s blue and he has no choice but to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the whole stupid situation. “Yes, perhaps, but I’m almost nineteen, Malfoy,” she snaps, hating how petulant she sounds. “I’m hardly a child.”

Malfoy stares at her for a long, hard minute, then sighs again. “This is going to be an adjustment for all of us, Miss Granger. I suggest you make the best of the situation and modify yourself accordingly, including showing the appropriate level of respect to those you might have known in the past who have moved on in their lives, and the same will be done for you. You’ve been granted an incredible opportunity; you’ll not want to squander it.”

Her jaw drops at his chastisement—who the hell does he think he is? What sort of professor this man must be if that’s the way he speaks to students having difficulties beyond their control!

Hermione draws in a series of long, deep breaths in a bid to calm herself, lest she slap Malfoy’s pointy nose off his pointy face—again. “So, what now?” she asks. “I stay here, but what do I do? Life at Hogwarts was over for me the day I went missing.”

“The Headmistress will sort something out for you, Miss Granger, I can assure you of that.” He waves her off, like her (very, very reasonable) concerns are nothing more than trivialities, silly little bumps on an otherwise straight and smooth road. “Lodgings, clothing and whatever else you need will be made available to you, and we’ll see what can be done about your Gringotts account, if it still stands.”

Lodgings, clothing, necessities, cash, but not the most important thing she requires. 

“Was my wand recovered from the lake?”

For the first time, a hint of the smirk that reminds her of the boy she used to know shadows his thin lips. “That, Miss Granger, I can help with.”

**XXX**

Hermione feels much more secure with her wand back in hand, even if it is tarnished and worn with time passed without her. It’s the only familiar thing she can find in this new, strange world, and she clutches to it like a tether.

In the confines of the castle, things aren’t so different. It’s only when she’s given copies of _The Daily Prophet_ and other Muggle publications to read that it starts to sink in just how much everything has changed. She sees new names in political offices, different athletes dominating the sports pages, articles of public interest on things that didn’t even exist in her time. She feels like a transplant into the twenty-first century, and can’t help but think that this new body is rejecting her presence completely.

But she’s adjusted as best she can over the last few weeks. Headmistress McGonagall (teetering at the edge of retirement at the ripe old age of ninety-six) welcomed her back with open arms and tears (not to mention the same cagy attitude towards revealing her reappearance to her old friends and family as Malfoy had had) and even offered her a temporary job assisting with the marking of some of the first and second years’ assignments for a small stipend.

It’s quiet work, but it keeps her busy. Keeps her from losing her mind while everyone else talks about her and her situation as though she doesn’t exist. In some small way, she understands; up until only a few short weeks ago, she hadn’t existed—she’d been long dead, grieved but fondly remembered.

It’s interesting to her, though, that magic has changed so little in that decade she was gone. She supposes magic isn’t as flexible and ever-changing as Muggle science, but as she sits in her small room and marks a stack of charms essays, she has the strangest feeling of Deja vu, like she wrote the same essays she’s marking now when she was a first-year. 

“The curriculum is long due for an overhaul,” she mutters to herself as she marks corrections over Celeste Longbottom’s essay. Neville clearly didn’t waste any time after graduation, she notes to herself, but she smiles all the same. Of her friends, she thinks maybe Neville deserved happiness and stability, a cheerful family unit, more than most.

She hasn’t looked into the lives of her friends, hasn’t tried to find out how Harry and Ron and everyone else are living without her with them anymore, if they have children or where they work, who they married and if they’re happy. She isn’t sure she has the courage to do so; she can’t be in a position to just view their lives from the outskirts. She misses them too much to have to settle for that. Instead, she contents herself with reading the names on the tops of the essays, keeping a lookout for familiar surnames and creating stories for the ones she recognises. 

Happiness is hard enough for her to come by; she takes it where she can and pretends it’s enough.

A little over an hour passes before she finishes marking the charms essays. The kids are brighter than she first gave them credit for, or perhaps she’s just a generous marker. Hermione bundles the parchments into a smart leather satchel and ventures from her cosy, fire-warmed room and through the halls to the professors’ lodgings.

Flitwick isn’t in his rooms when she passes, but there’s a fire burning in the corner and a steaming cup of tea on his low desk, so he can’t be too far. Hermione leaves the marked essays on the desk and lets herself out.

Long shadows follow her back down the hall, creeping on and retreating in turn. She’s almost made it to the end when she comes across a door cracked open, wavering tendrils of firelight shimmering in a slant on the stone floor before her. She glances up the door and squints to read the plaque:

PROF. DRACO MALFOY  
POTIONS MASTER  
DEPT. HEAD. SLYTHERIN HOUSE

“What are you doing out there, Miss Granger?” he calls out.

A blush heats her cheeks at being caught. “I was dropping off some essays for Professor Flitwick,” she says, edging the door further open to reveal Malfoy hunched over a wide desk, a long black-green quill in hand skittering over a parchment.

She hasn’t seen a whole lot of him since he found her by the lake (he had been looking over Slytherin Quidditch practice, he had told her later, when a scream from a student by the lake alerted him); their paths don't cross often, and despite all his help, she still finds herself falling back into old patterns: avoiding Slytherins, namely pointy, ferret-like ones that called her names and made things much more difficult for her than they needed to be. Stupid, really, when she’s seen first-hand now how ingrained inter-house unity is among the students now. She wishes she could be as benevolent, but it’s much harder than she anticipated.

“He was called out by the Ravenclaw prefects on rounds a moment ago,” he informs her, distracted by whatever enthralling something that has captured his attention. “I heard them as they went by. Strangely loud, Ravenclaws, when they’re enthusiastic about something. He shouldn’t be too long if you plan on waiting.”

“No need,” Hermione replies. “Do you have any marking I could do? I’ve been looking at first and second years’ work for the other professors.”

He glances up at her for a short moment. “That’s what you’ve been doing since they settled you here? Brightest witch of the age at their disposal and they have her doing the grunt work for irked professors?”

Hermione shifts in place, tamping down the affront she feels. “I don’t know what else you’d have me do. A supposedly dead girl locked in a castle with no access to the outside world isn’t left with many options.”

“Fair enough.” He places his quill down and rifles under the parchment he was writing upon and shuffles out a thick folder brimming with even more parchments. “Only because I know you took ancient runes, and not that long ago by your mind, either,” he says, handing the folder to her. “I’m sure you can make out something of academic interest between the chicken-scratch writing and the tear-stains.”

“One of those sorts of professors, are you?” she mutters as she takes the folder from his outstretched hand. “If Snape taught you anything, it should be that fear is no motivator.”

“Or else Longbottom would have been cream of the crop, yes?”

She can’t help the question, then, that has been on her lips since arriving in this time. It bursts forth, uncensored and far ruder than intended. “Why on earth did you become a professor?”

He graces her with one sidelong look, then retrieves his quill and focusses back on his work. “Why does anyone do anything, Miss Granger? I wanted to.”

“You hardly seem the sort.”

“No,” he says, drawing out the word with the first tenuous strings of impatience she’s heard from him since arriving. Not even her inquisition when she arrived had bothered him so. “My sixteen-year-old self hardly seems the sort. The sooner you separate him from me, the better for us all.”

There isn’t anything else she can think to say to that, because he’s right.

Hermione bundles the parchments, mumbles her thanks, and makes a hasty retreat, grasping the folder so tight she’s sure to have creased the contents.

When she’s reached her rooms again, she lays out the potions essays in a pile on her desk and readies a red quill for corrections. Only there are hardly any to give. She doesn’t give out a grade less than seventy-five-percent for any of them. 

****

XXX

From there, they share a tenuous friendship: a teetering-on-the-edge, almost-but-not-quite, friendship. At least, they do once she can work out how to speak to him without anything awkward or downright offensive falling out of her mouth. She can’t talk to her real friends, she can’t talk to her acquaintances, she can’t talk to her family. She might as well talk to her enemy.

It was difficult at first, ignoring the derision that lined his face when she asked him to join her for all manner of different things: tea in the library, on a walk down to the lake to see the plaque in her honour left there, even offers for her to join him in the forest to forage for new potions ingredients.

“Don’t you have someone else to pester?” he’d snapped at her after one particularly insistent request for company.

She’d felt something stupidly sad wend through her, a bolt of loneliness and longing for Harry and Ron so palpable it burned. “No,” she’d replied. “I don’t.”

It took close to a month before Malfoy agreed to anything.

It started at a strained morning tea—that he only agreed to attending on the proviso that she stop inviting him anywhere—pocketed with awkward small talk, strained grimaces and bouts of uncomfortable silence, with her stuttering out:

“I can’t believe Professor Binns still teaches.”

Then, Malfoy waved his hands in a dramatic flourish, swallowing his mouthful of scone before exclaiming, “You think he was dull as a professor? Try being in a staff meeting with him!”

At first, the conversation that flows between them is small and unassuming, throwbacks to their shared years at Hogwarts, memories common to them both but offensive to neither. It’s difficult at first to find threads of commonalities through the heaped mound of divergences in who they are, but once one is found, it unspools and leaves itself open, brimming with even more.

Who would have thought Malfoy would _enjoy_ the works of Tolkien? 

Who would have thought she would enjoy _discussing_ Tolkien with Malfoy?

Before long, she’s been in the future (the present? How should she refer to it, anyway?) for nearly three months. Christmas is approaching, and by the intervention of some strange god with even stranger ideas, she’s counting Draco as her only friend. A friend she’s grown to trust and rely on in ways she’d only ever allowed with Harry and Ron.

At least, she might, if only he would stop calling her _that_.

“Good afternoon, Miss Granger,” he greets her in her far corner of the library that afternoon. She doesn’t sit with the rest of the staff, or even indeed with the students during meals or for snack breaks. An elf named Hessie, sworn to keep Hermione’s existence under wraps, brings meals to her rooms. Hermione’s usually too baffled by the elf’s exuberance to do anything other than stare after the creature when it arrives in a flurry, leaves a plate, and disappears just as quickly. After establishing themselves as perhaps not the sworn mortal enemies they once regarded themselves as, Malfoy insisted on joining her on his breaks for cups of tea or to simply enjoy the quiet together.

“Professor,” she acknowledges grudgingly. She hates using his title almost as much as she hates him using hers.

He settles in a seat across from her and pulls a potions text from his bag. Nearly an hour passes in silence as they both lose themselves in their reading, Malfoy marking up the pages of his text with his long, green-black quill as he goes.

“How are things?” he asks after a time, as though he doesn’t ask her the same question every single time their paths intersect.

“Fine,” she recites, her usual rote response. “And yourself?”

He sighs and shuts his book with a thump. “Well enough. The Christmas rush, I’m sure you can appreciate.”

Hermione winces and flexes her hand, where a cramp is seizing at her wrist. She had been awake until the early hours the past few nights, marking essays and tests on a deadline for other professors. “That I can.”

“You know, Miss Granger—”

“—I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she mumbles.

“What, Miss Granger?” He fixes her with an odd look, like he can’t understand why it’s such an annoyance coming from him, of all people. “Why does my calling you that bother you?”

“Because it’s not how you know me,” she tells him. “It’s not how I remember you knowing me.”

“How and when I knew you are vastly different for the two of us now.” He scratches at the near invisible—and startlingly different—stubble dusting his chin. “It would be the height of impropriety, you know.”

“I don’t see how. I’m not your student. You aren’t my professor.”

He quirks a brow at her. “You’d rather I go back to calling you Granger?”

She shrugs. “What’s one dropped honorific between friends?”

The look he gives her then is so serious, so grave, so _shocked_ , she wonders how far she’s set back the bar of their acquaintance by asking this of him.

“Are we friends?” he asks instead.

His expression gives her pause, and she takes a moment to think about the question, whether she’s just cleaving to him out of a sense of familiarity or if there’s really something there. 

“Of a strange sort, yes,” she says. “I’d like to think we are.”

He leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his slim chest. “And I suppose, all things being equal, you’ll drop mine and call me Malfoy again?”

“The title indicates a barrier between us,” she says, mirroring his position. “A barrier I’d like to think no longer exists. That never existed.”

“As long as you’re here,” he warns her, “that barrier will always exist.”

“Again, I really don’t see how. Your authority is not over me. I’m not your student.”

It’s slow, and so gradual she almost doesn’t notice, but when she sees the grin spread over his face, one that lights him up and softens the points of his face until his features settle into something genuinely handsome, she knows she’s won. 

“It didn’t feel right to me, either,” he admits, a small, hesitant smirk tilting his lips, “Granger.”

And from there, everything changes.

**XXX**

It’s a brisk morning in March when Hermione’s progress in the world grinds to a standstill.

She sits in her private corner of the library, paying only cursory interest to the Muggle tabloid paper she had delivered along with copies of the Telegraph and the Times, when Draco bursts on in, disrupting the pleasant silence keeping her company.

She doesn’t mind in the slightest.

“Careful, Malfoy,” she says mildly. “Children are studying.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Granger, but I’ve yet to find another student who matches your voracity for books and knowledge, nor your enthusiasm for the library, so I supremely doubt that.”

She regards him with a mild glare as he sits down beside her, drawing in deep, panting breaths as though he sprinted the distance to her side.

“That’s not _The Daily Prophet_ , is it?” he asks after a moment, sounding vaguely panicked. And here she thought the man was damn-near unflappable.

She holds it out for him, demonstrating the complete lack of moving headlines and looping photographs. “The Sun, actually, a Muggle tabloid. Complete garbage, but better than nothing. Why?”

He shrugs, too quickly and stiffly to be genuine. “No reason. Maybe give the _Prophet_ a miss today, though. Nothing but Quidditch stats and whatnot for the upcoming season.”

She’s already seen the covering page of the Prophet and knows that’s completely untrue. “All right, I suppose,” she says, humouring him. She sets the paper down on the coffee table before her. “May I ask what prompted the workout?”

He glances over at her, his eyes full of a warmth she never thought she’d find in him, or his particular shade of grey. “Perhaps I was feeling enthusiastic about the prospect of your company.”

It sounds like a joke. It should be a joke. But there’s something about the way he says the words that gives her reason to pause and warmth on her cheeks. He’s been doing that an awful lot lately: borderline flirtatious comments that have her heart skipping beats it can ill afford to; out-of-place compliments on her appearance and qualities that leave her speechless, stuttering out reciprocations that have him grinning.

“Or perhaps,” he goes on, splitting right down the middle of her musings, “I was going to offer you the chance to join me in Hogsmeade later today.”

As what, a date? Her mind goes into some kind of spastic overdrive, sorting through moment after moment to see if she missed the point where the path she was on diverged to one where Draco Malfoy would be offering her a date of his own free will. And then again, to see where that path forked off to one where she’d be perfectly okay with that happening.

“I… all right,” she mumurs. It’s still cold enough out that she can get away with wearing layers of cloaks to hide her identity.

He smiles at her, nothing so large or overt that it changes his face, but something smaller, warmer.

“Be ready by midday.”

He stands and leaves, glancing back at her once on the way out. Something giddy and—dare she say it— _girly_ washes over her. She smiles to herself and goes back to her papers, tossing away The Sun—because really, what had she been thinking?—and pulling from under her stack of other Muggle papers her copy of _The Daily Prophet_.

As she thumbs through it, she notes to herself that articles in the _Prophet_ never seem to change too much: Aurors do their jobs, those in the Ministry pass or turn laws that divide the magical community, Celestina Warbeck’s fluctuating weight dominates the gossip pages just as it had years ago.

Just as she’s about to turn the page, her eyes find a tiny article in the bottom right corner, so small she would have thought the article wanted to be missed. She skims the headline, stares at the accompanying picture, and feels her heart constrict.

**_Potter’s Welcome First Daughter  
By Seraphina Stolemny_ **

_The Daily Prophet can confirm this morning that Ginerva ‘Ginny’ Weasley-Potter, 29, and wizarding-world saviour Harry Potter, 30, welcomed their third child, a daughter, late last night. Harry Potter was photographed leaving St. Mungo’s this morning with long-time friend and brother-in-law, Ronald Weasley, both undoubtedly ecstatic at a rare female addition for both families. The baby girl joins brothers James Sirius, 5, and Albus Severus, 3. No official comment has been made by the Potter or Weasley families at this time._

She feels something in her heart fracture at the photo of her two best friends playing on a loop. She looks at Harry and Ron smiling and laughing and jostling with each other as though time never passed for them; she looks at them and sees the schoolboys she once knew, and not the men they became.

The image and article blur in a swirl of tears.

They couldn’t have, shouldn’t have, wouldn’t have mourned her forever.

So why, now, does seeing them so clearly moved on with their lives break her heart?

It comes together then, slow as molasses, how concerned Draco was earlier that she might have seen and read a copy of the _Prophet_ , as though he knew the contents and didn’t want her to see it.

The thought that he could keep something as huge as Harry and Ginny having another child baffles her. Then it infuriates her. Why would he keep something like this from her, and on purpose, too?

There’s still another hour or so before she plans to meet him for their trip to Hogsmeade, so there’s a chance he’s still in his office, doing whatever it is Draco does when he’s alone.

She bursts through the library with little regard for who might see her, and navigates the halls and staircases for the professors’ offices and lodgings, finding the door marked with his stupid, ostentatious golden plaque with such practised ease she’s certain she could make the trek in her sleep. 

She doesn’t bother with knocking. Instead, she hauls the door open with such force it nearly snaps off its hinges and stomps towards the other, almost invisible door at the back of the room, concealing his private potions rooms.

Sure enough, Malfoy’s there, back turned to her as he stirs rhythmic circles over a cauldron glowing with faint blue light. For how much noise she made as she entered, he hasn’t so much as twitched.

She slams the paper down on his table, firm enough to rattle the tools and disturb the bubbling cauldron.

He glances down at the paper from the corner of one eye and sighs. “I’m going to have to have a word with those elves,” he mutters. “I paid them not to show you that.”

“I have it delivered every day, you nitwit. You were never going to tell me about this, were you?”

He sets down the ladle and turns to glare at her. “No, I wasn’t. What good would it have accomplished, Granger? You aren’t supposed to contact him, nor Weasley. You said as much yourself you don’t want to read any number of the shitty biographies every author and their bloody pet dog has written about Potter or any of your former friends. Why start now?”

“It’s just…” She sighs and drops her gaze to the knotted wood of the bench, pockmarked with wounds from generations of clumsy cutters. “They look so happy.”

“Yes, and why shouldn’t they? Potter’s just had a baby. Weasley’s got himself a niece. Of fucking course they’re happy.”

“I think… I didn’t expect it to…” She trails off, words smothered by a wave of shame.

“To what, Granger?”

She drops her voice to a low whisper, hoping with some distant part of herself that Draco won’t hear her admission. “I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.”

Hermione had her head down, ready for Draco to reassure her as he so often had in the weeks since she gained his confidence. Instead, a long silence passes without a flicker between them to break it. When she looks up, she finds him glaring at her, a sneer she hadn’t seen so much as a shadow of since before, when they were both still students.

“You want to know what they named that girl?” Before she can shake her head, he ploughs on. “They named her Hermione.”

The moment stills, frozen, too easily shattered. “What?”

He cocks his head, as though pondering something inconsequential even with her in a crisis right in front of him. “Well, the child’s middle name is Hermione—Lily Hermione, actually—but I’m not going to quibble over details with you.”

The words feel dry in her throat, like she has to force them out. “I… what?”

“That’s right, Granger, they named her in your honour. They might have moved on, but they never forgot you. Don’t you remember what I told you when you got here? Potter campaigned his arse off to establish that scholarship fund in your memory and spouts off near on the same damn speech about academic integrity and the honour of the fund’s namesake to the winners each year. He funded every damn one of your shiny, shiny plaques and fuck, every time I speak to the man, I’m treated to yet another sodding anecdote about the time bloody Hermione Granger did such and such back in the day!”

He sighs and goes on again, with far less drama, “The point is, Granger, I honestly don’t believe Potter and his band of merry men could forget you. I don’t think it’s possible.”

Her mouth gapes as she gathers potential responses and dismisses them just as quick. “I didn’t know.”

Draco lets out a noise like a growl. “Of fucking course you haven’t! You’ve barely even noticed when someone actually is glad to see you again! How do you think it feels for those of us who actually are happy to see you alive only to be brushed off because they aren’t the ‘right’ person for you? Because there have been dozens—fucking _dozens_ , Granger—of staffers here wanting to see and speak to you again. You’ve been so busy here with this whole sorry ‘woe-is-me’ routine that you are so _infuriatingly blind_ to everything else.”

She opens her mouth to refute that complete and utter tripe, a slight on her character she knows to be untrue, but she can’t. He’s right. Susan Bones, or Madam Bones more appropriately, had been the familiar Medi-Witch in charge of her care only a few short months ago. She’d been so happy to see Hermione again, too, even if they hadn’t really been friends before. But Hermione had brushed off her (overly exuberant) offers of tea and companionship, even going so far as to hide away whenever Susan was within sight. The poor girl (or woman, now, she supposes) had done nothing to earn the slight except try to be a friend when Hermione had none.

But that is only one item in a long, lonely list of transgressions she’s committed since arriving.

“Anyone would think you’re a sadist, the way you take up with me all the time,” he goes on. “And if I have to be that for you, Granger, the person you talk to about things, then fine. But _fuck_ , it can’t be good for you, can it?”

She feels an unexpected twinge of hurt somewhere deep within her. “I haven’t minded,” she tells him. _Not even a little bit, not even when it should_. But perhaps he has? She can’t ignore the look on his face whenever they meet, even if it does only grace his features for a split second before it disappears: it’s a look of effort, his jaw strained and his body stiff, as though being around her is some sort of struggle.

“Nor have I,” he says, but that strained look passes through his eyes again. “But you can’t keep acting wounded that you can’t have Potter and Weasley, then spurring away everyone else who wants to help you.”

“It’s not just that!” she cries, overcome with a determined need to defend herself. “I can’t do anything here! Not just seeing Harry and Ron. I can’t go to my favourite bookstores, my favourite parks, buy my favourite tea. I can’t go into the Muggle world. I can’t even see my Mum and Dad.” Her voice cuts off as a sob washes over her, crippling her body to its knees.

“Are you a witch or aren’t you?” he says in the same waspish tone. “The world can’t see Hermione Granger, but they might be able to deal with Hermione Granger in a couple of well-placed charms and a bloody wig. Hell, it’s no different to what you gallivant about Hogsmeade in, isn’t it?”

“I can’t just disguise myself and jump out in front of them!” Her eyes burn with the effort it takes to hold her tears back. “I… I want them to know who I am.”

After a long, tense silence, Draco sighs, sounding more defeated than anything else. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I try to help and you’re just more determined than ever to poke holes and make yourself out to be the victim even more. How about you stop bitching and whinging about your problems, which I think have resolved themselves quite nicely, really, all things considered, and stop acting like such a spoiled, entitled bitch with a martyr complex!”

Her jaw drops at the accusation, and the insult that fell from his lips. He hasn’t spoken to her like that in… she doesn’t even know how long anymore. Months? Years? “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” she hisses.

“No, Granger,” he snaps. “The problem is that it’s been a fucking decade; of course I’ve changed. You, on the other hand, haven’t. You’re still the same swottish, know-it-all, holier-than-thou… gorgeous little bint you always were!”

Whatever retort was at the tip of her tongue drowns at his words. Her boiling outrage settles to a simmer in the face of his outburst. “What?” she croaks.

Draco is silent for a moment, a look of horror darkening the light of his features. “Fuck,” he mutters, shooting from his seat to pace around the small room. “Fuck. I wasn’t… I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You think… you think I’m—”

“Granger, please, forget I said anything.” He takes his wand and aims it beneath the cauldron, extinguishing the blue flame. He shoves the wand into a small, invisible pocket on the thigh of his pants and makes for the door as though Death itself is on his tail.

“Malfoy! Draco!” she calls after him. Her legs aren’t long enough to match his strides, but in that moment, she must be far more determined to have this conversation than he is to avoid it.

She beats him to the door, her small frame holding him ridiculously at bay. “Please,” she says. “What did you mean?”

He quirks a brow at her. “You need me to spell it out for you, Granger? For someone so smart you can be remarkably thick.”

“I must be missing the subtext. Maybe you ought to enlighten me.”

Draco sighs and runs a hand down the length of his face, conflict playing itself out on his features. “When you went missing,” he tentatively begins, “I was… utterly devastated.”

“You’re joking.” He must be; his idea of a hilarious prank.

“Don’t presume to know anything about me, Granger,” he says, something like a warning colouring his tone. “We haven’t been properly acquainted for long. You don’t know me well yet.”

There’s silence for a moment, deep, tense lines etching their way into the skin between his eyes. “Potter and Weasley started asking question at dinner that night. Loudly, too, asking everyone who might have been in contact with you if they’d seen you anywhere. McGonagall must have some spectacular supersonic hearing; she was down amongst the tables and putting together search parties to find you quicker than any of the other professors moved.

“It was a group of Hufflepuffs who found your things by the lake, Miss Bones among them” —Guilt trips her heart, making it harder to breathe— “They’d been searching for hours by that point, everything was found just after midnight. The working theory at the time was that you killed yourself. After that, it was like something in the school just… fractured. Hermione Granger was dead.”

Hermione slumps against the low bench, breath coming in short, painful bursts, her gaze focussed on the cracks between the stones of the floor. She never knew any of this, but she never thought to ask, either. Never thought to find out the consequences of her hurtling through that portal at the bottom of the lake

“But beyond that,” he says, “beyond the grief, the guilt, everything else, it fucking ruined me to know that everything I ever wished I had the balls to tell you didn’t matter anymore. What good to anyone were my feelings for a dead girl?

“I didn’t even go to your funeral,” he goes on, spitting the words like he’s disgusted with himself. “I went home and tore my bedroom apart. I was surly and belligerent to anyone that came within three feet of me for over a year. I didn’t know how to handle my feelings for you, but I sure as fuck didn’t know how to handle the grief.

“Eventually,” he says on a sigh, “as I suppose anyone does, I moved on. I thought about you often. It wasn’t as crippling, but it was always, always laced with regret: what an absolute cock I was to you, the awful names I called you. My complete and utter lack of emotional maturity when it came to you.

“So then, after spending the better part of a decade berating myself and in and out of therapy to deal with everything else about your apparent death that completely fucked me up mentally, can you imagine, Granger, what it must have been like to dredge you from the lake? After having believed you dead for so, so long, having grieved and moved on?”

“I… I don’t know what you want me to say,” she stammers.

“I don’t want you to say a damn thing. I just want you, for one minute, to think about what it was like for the rest of us, and what it’s like now to be continuously shunned in favour of memories of people you aren’t permitted to contact! Do you think you can do that for me, Granger?”

Yes, she probably can. But not today. Not after all of that.

Instead, she shoots him one last glare and runs from the room.

“Granger!” he calls after her. This time, he’s the one chasing her, and he succeeds.

His warm hand wraps around her wrist and pulls her to a gentle halt. “Granger, stop.”

She makes a half-hearted effort to pull from him, but she’s exhausted. She used her last burst of energy attempting to flee. She collapses against him, and he wraps his arms around her, enveloping her in the spicy, green scents of potions ingredients.

He doesn’t attempt to move as she cries, just holds her as all the emotion falls out of her. Every so often a pained voice pours out of her, screaming self-recriminations that have Malfoy squeezing her even tighter. He doesn’t say anything to confirm or deny what a terrible person she’s become—or maybe she’s always been this way? He just holds her steady, calm in a battering storm.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, though. Doesn’t remember even moving to lie on the plush couch taking up most of the small living quarters. She wakes hours later to darkness beyond Malfoy’s windows, her head pressed against the solid wall of his chest.

He sets down a book he must have been reading and looks down at her. “Feeling better?”

Her eyes feel stinging and swollen. “I think so.” She lets out a yawn and pulls herself off him, the absence of his warmth against her leaving a hollow feeling in her bones. “What time is it?”

“Dinner time.” He gestures over to his table, where a steaming plate sits waiting. “I took the liberty of asking your… very enthusiastic elf to bring your dinner here.”

“Thank you. But I think we still have one last thing to talk about.”

“I’d really rather not chat anymore, Granger, if it’s all the same to you.”

She shakes her head. While she still has the nerve and lapsed reflexes that come with being groggy from sleep, she seizes her Gryffindor courage and blurts out, “You liked me.”

He quirks a brow at her. “I think we’ve talked about that already.”

“You accidentally called me gorgeous and the proceeded to tell me how my ‘death’ impacted you.”

“I’m sorry. How do you make declarations of having liked someone? Impart on me your wisdom, please.”

“Please don’t joke about this.” She scoots closer, so her knees are knocking against his. He looks uncomfortable, glaring back and forth between her face and their touching knees.

“What do you want me to tell you, Granger?” he asks her, his voice weary and drained. “ _Liked you_ is probably phrasing it strongly. I felt something for you that I didn’t quite understand. It was only after everything that I recognised it as being… probably more important than I was willing to acknowledge it as. And I think part of the reason it pissed me off so much was because I knew those feelings would never be returned.”

He rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm then runs his hands through his hair, making the strands stand on end. “I won’t preach my innocence to you, Granger. I know my conduct around you was… annoying at best, downright offensive at worst. I won’t defend my actions against you as some sort of misguided attempt to garner your attention. I was a prick.”

“Yes, you were. Still are if I’m being honest.”

He cracks a small smile at that. “Teenaged Draco was a stupid boy that didn’t know how to handle his feelings for a woman he never really intended to get caught up in, but he will never forgive me if I don’t tell you, at least once, that you drive him—and me, still, after all this time—utterly crazy, Granger.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“You do, too, you know.”

“I what?”

“You drive me crazy, too,” she admits.

He doesn’t smile, exactly, but there’s a glimmer of hope tucked somewhere behind those incongruous grey eyes. “How so, Granger?”

That’s the thing: she can’t even begin to pin it down.

“Perhaps it’s the way you tell me what I need to hear with absolutely no qualms, or any decency, really. Maybe it’s the way I see you interact with your students and see how you’ve changed from the boy you were to the man you are now.” With every word she utters, she migrates just that little bit closer. “Maybe it’s how you still have some of that little boy inside you, but you know just how much to hold him back when we’re together. But mostly, I think it’s the way you became my closest friend when I never thought I’d ever think of you that way.”

His lips tip into a humourous little smile, and she can barely take her eyes off the pink fullness of them. “So, now that that’s all in the open,” he drawls, “what are you going to do with me?”

He’s close, but far enough away that she feels _so_ in control and at ease with what’s about to happen. She realises he’s leaving it that way on purpose, letting her dictate the pace and decide exactly how they’re going to move forward. Newfound consideration; another one to add to the list.

And that makes the decision to do what she does next a much easier one.

Her movements are clumsy and unpracticed, but there isn’t a doubt in her mind when she topples forward into his lap and presses her lips to his.

It’s soft and unhurried, but lacking nothing she’s come to expect from Draco Malfoy. In the whisper of his tongue on her lip, there’s passion; in the hands on her neck and waist, there’s unexpected tenderness; in the slanting of his mouth and her lip slipping between his, there’s a tease; in the heat of his touch and the urgency of his lips, there’s an intensity that threatens to drown her.

Until her lips found his, she had no idea just how much she’d wanted them.

Draco groans and pulls back just enough to catch his breath and ask, “Are… are you sure you’re okay with this?”

She gives a frantic nod and winds her arms around his neck, pressing her lips on his, determined to keep him hot and solid against her. She can’t say she ever gave anything more than a passing thought to being with him like this, but now that she’s there, she can’t imagine it ending any other way.

“Oh, Merlin,” he murmurs into her mouth. “This is _so fucking wrong_.”

“Why?” she asks him through panting breaths. Not even for words do their mouths part. She kisses him again and again and again, and not once does he stop her. “I’m not a student. I’m of age. We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

“No, but you’re—you’re… oh, _fuck_ , Granger.”

He sets his hands on her shoulders and pushes her gently back, but it does nothing to repair the modesty of the situation: her knees are sprawled on either side of his hips, her pelvis flush with his and dangerously aware of the hard length of him tucked away in his trousers. In the low light of the fire-lit sconces in his room, his lips are red and glistening, eyes bright and manic with lust mirrored in her own.

“This shouldn’t happen again,” he rasps, but she can hear the reluctance in his tone, in the feel of his hands navigating her hips to waist to the soft curve below her breasts and back again. “Not while we’re… like this.”

“No,” she agrees. Her voice isn’t her own, tinged beyond recognition by desire and a hunger she has never known before.

They’re silent for a beat before they clash together again, the roughness of his stubbled cheeks grazing her skin to stinging, but she can’t bring herself to care about the possibility of a rash when he draws her lower lip into his mouth again and scrapes his teeth across it. She’s been kissed before, but it’s never once been like this.

Then his hands are at the hem of her skirt, rucking it up to around her hips, then halting completely. He glances up at her, the question plain in his eyes. She nods and takes his hands in hers, guiding one to her straining breast and the other between her legs. His warm hand skims over her thighs, nails scraping over the sensitive inner skin, as he tugs aside her cotton panties and delves two slim fingers into her ready depths.

“Fuck, Granger,” he groans against her neck. He licks along the line of it, teeth sliding the hollows and tendons, and she moans her approval into the warm, dark air. “You feel fucking perfect.”

He sets a steady rhythm, pumping his fingers in and out while his thumb brushes soft, feather-light touches over her clit. The needy coil within her winds tighter and tighter under his careful hand, her hips bucking into his to call the pace, make it faster and faster until she can’t hold back anymore.

With a harsh cry, she falls apart around his fingers. With nothing left in the air but their gasping breaths, Hermione stares at the rear wall and wonders when everything changed.

And when she decided she was all right with it.

****

XXX

She loses count of the amount of times they touch each other over the next few weeks. How many times they venture late at night into tiny nooks in the castle she’d never noticed before just to pull and tear at each other’s clothing to taste the skin underneath. How many times she falls apart beneath his hands and tongue. How many times she returns the favour.

They never go further than that, though, to both her relief and her annoyance. He never tries anything, and neither does she, and she doesn’t think they ever will while they’re in the situation they are. It’s better that way, she tells herself. Better not to become too attached to something so ephemeral. 

In the moments she can pull herself away from Draco’s hands, Hermione seeks out Susan Bones. Since finding out it had been Susan who essentially got the task of all but confirming Hermione’s death, she’s felt the need to reassure the quiet nurse, who gives her a deeper insight as to the impact Hermione’s supposed suicide had on the school during those final hours before breaking for the year.

“The train station was so quiet the day after, when everyone was leaving,” Susan told her over tea the first time. “I don’t think there was a single person who didn’t grieve for you in some way.”

Hermione was dubious. “Really?” she had asked, because she’s well aware of all the feathers she ruffled as a student, with SPEW, her haughtiness, her quick temper and tendency to judge.

“Really,” Susan replied, nodding. “I think you touched far more people than you know, Hermione.”

After the first, it’s a standing date: lunch on Tuesdays, outside if the weather permits. Susan proves to be a godsend.

“Told you so,” Draco tells her between nips to her neck, after she tells him how well the lunch with Susan went that day. She’s never been gladder to have been proven wrong. “Maybe you’ll actually listen to me now.”

She sighs and tilts her neck to better his access to the soft, sensitive skin pulled taut there, moaning when he drags his teeth over her pulse. They’ve reached a level of comfort with each other now that makes their interactions so smooth and easy, even as her heart kicks up a frantic beneath under his touch. She wonders if all relationships are like this, if Draco has noticed the same things she has, if he’s as content and relaxed as she is.

“Once,” she playfully corrects him. Who would have thought teasing Draco Malfoy could prove so much fun? Trading insults and jibes for all those years proves to have been an utter waste. “Once you were right. Would you take those odds? Essentially one in a million.”

He nudges her to lie back on the couch and settles between her legs. With a cheeky grin he reaches out to inch up the fabric of her blouse and reveal her stomach, her ribs, the pale blue cotton of her bra. With a gentle hand he eases her breasts out of their cups, deft fingers plucking her sensitive nipples to standing. “At least three times, Granger, and you know it.”

“When you’ve made up those final two, you’ll know where to find me.”

He chuckles and rests his forehead against her stomach, his fine hairs tickling her skin. “You are an infuriating woman, Granger. I fear the person you’ll grow up to become.”

“I’ll say it again, Malfoy: I’m nineteen. I’m an adult.”

He groans. “Don’t remind me that you aren’t even twenty yet when we’re like this.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I do.” He sighs. “Fuck, put you in a position of power and Merlin knows what will happen.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” she says, her breath hitching as he licks a circle around her belly button. “It’s not like I can go anywhere and make that happen.”

He looks up at her and smirks then, but there’s something off about it; sad, almost. “You’ll go back to your own time, Granger. You’ll have all the opportunities in the world to put yourself in the power seat.”

“What makes you say that?”

Draco gives her a funny look. “McGonagall has an entire bloody troupe of Unspeakables and Arithmancers working on your case. How they haven’t whisked you back already is beyond me.” Her confusion must be clear on her face, because he cocks his head to the side and asks, “You didn’t know this?”

“I… I haven’t spoken all that much to McGonagall lately,” she admits.

“Perhaps you should. She’d be able to enlighten you better than I can.” His smile turns wicked then, a promise that her guilt will soon be forgotten, if only for a little while. He slides down her body and flips up her skirt, fingers reaching into the edge of her panties to drag them with painful slowness down her legs. “Now hush up, lie back and close your eyes, Granger. I’m going to make you sing.”

****

XXX

In a remarkable show of serendipity, a missive appears the following morning on an empty tea tray delivered to her by a cheeky-looking elf: a note from McGonagall asking Hermione to join her for tea, along with the word Jellybean, which could only be the password. Another stab of guilt pinches at her; she’s received lots of notes of this nature from McGonagall over the past few months, and she’s refused each one. There’s not a question in her mind as she hurries up countless steps and corridors to the Headmistress’s office, gives the password, and steps on through.

Her eyes water at the sight of her favourite professor, yet another casualty of her incessant need to push everyone away. McGonagall stands from her desk, her frame slight, as though the lightest gust could blow her over, her eyes as piercing and hawk-like as ever.

“Miss Granger,” McGonagall greets her with a smile, “won’t you sit down?”

Hermione sets herself down in the plush armchair and takes a covert moment to survey the room she hadn’t set foot in since her own time. The office doesn’t look all that different to when it was Dumbledore seated behind the desk, except McGonagall obviously doesn’t share his frivolity—except for when it extends to sweets-based passwords, perhaps. The odd little contraptions and knick-knacks that once decorated the desk and walls are gone, replaced by thick, leather-bound texts and artists’ renderings of creatures and objects mid-transformation. One framed drawing sits on the desk; a child’s drawing of a tabby-cat.

“There has been much discussion,” McGonagall begins, waving her wand over a teapot to set it pouring into their waiting mugs, “among the Unspeakables and Arithmancers as to the best course of action regarding your… situation.”

Hermione tenses, pressing back into the suddenly not-quite-so-soft padding of her seat. “And?”

McGonagall sips at her tea. “The preliminary Arithmancy equations have so far been favourable. They believe you will be able to return to your timeline with minimal incursions.”

She leans too far forward too quickly, whiplashing her neck. “I can go back?”

“They believe you’ll be able to use a specially-designed Time Turner to return to your time, yes,” McGonagall tells her gently. “You would return to the day you fell through the portal in the lake, after the previous you has travelled forward, and wait until you’ve reached this point in time again, when your younger self would have arrived. Once you get past that point, the paradox will have been fulfilled. You would be free to carry on with your life as you would have done otherwise.

“You must never mention this incident to anyone until your younger self has successfully reintegrated herself with your previous timeline,” she goes on, her sharp eyes solemn. “Consequences could be dire.”

Hermione swallows; her throat feels too dry. “When will I be able to go?”

“One week at the latest, though likely much sooner. The Unspeakables and Arithmancers are finalising everything as we speak.”

Hermione knows she shouldn’t feel the tugging at her heart that grips her then. She should be excited at the prospect at going home and not remaining in the time where she is little more than an interloper and a memory.

“I don’t know… thank you.”

McGonagall waves her off. “Think nothing of it.” The look on her face turns into something sympathetic, nearly maternal. “This is a good thing, Miss Granger. I know it hasn’t been easy for you, having to remain in the castle, hidden from the students and the outside world.”

Hermione shakes her head. “It’s what was necessary. I adjusted.” She clears her throat and ducks her head to disguise the sudden glazing of her eyes. 

“It shouldn’t have to be a question of adjusting,” McGonagall says, reaching a hand over the table to pat Hermione’s.

“Perhaps not,” Hermione says, “but it still was.” She stands, knocking the edge of the desk. McGonagall gives her a curious look. “Excuse me, Professor. I should go… prepare.”

McGonagall’s lined face softens with a small smile. She doesn’t question, doesn’t prod, doesn’t argue. Just waves at her back as Hermione surges through the door and down the stairs, tears she doesn’t even want to begin contemplating the significance of falling down her cheeks.

**XXX**

“When?”

It’s the first thing Draco says when she gets back from McGonagall’s office. Hermione pauses in her closing of the heavy door to his living quarters, runs her fingers along the grains in the wood.

“Next week, maybe sooner. Probably sooner.”

He nods, quiet, as she pulls the door closed. The thud of it echoes around them, then there’s nothing but a silence that should not be as awkward as it is.

“Good.” He turns from where he’s standing at a workbench and smirks at her. “You’ve been like a fish out of water for too long.”

“I haven’t minded,” she says, frustration mounting. Why must everyone assume her being in the future is some great inconvenience? “I… think I might have actually liked it here.”

“What, being cooped up in a castle with no one to talk to, no permission to access the outside world? Perhaps you have, introvert extraordinaire that you are.”

“Being able to live almost full time in the library was a wonderful thing,” she says, only half-joking. “But…” She trails off, annoyed then with how flirting comes so easily to some women, and seems to skip right over the rest. She takes a deep breath and says, “The library wasn’t the only thing I liked about being here.”

She gives him a meaningful look.

“Me?” He returns her look with one of incredulity.

“Yes, you.” She huffs. “Did you honestly think I’d be willing to start anything with you if I didn’t feel something for you? That I’d be kissing you and letting you touch me out of a sense of loneliness?”

“Of course not, but I know where you’re going with this and there is absolutely no need to go there.” He stalks towards her, stopping only when the toes of their shoes meet, matte leather on shiny patent leather. “Don’t feel the need to make this more than it is, Granger. I don’t care if I was something to pass the time.”

“Something to—” She coughs on the words, shocked and repulsed by them. “That isn’t… not even slightly… Draco, when I get back—”

“—No! Don’t you dare make… _this_ into some grand inevitable, Granger,” he snaps at her. “I know who I was back then. And I wasn’t _me_. I may have felt some something for you then, but I was a shit. Don’t approach me just because of what’s happened between us now.”

“That’s the thing, Draco,” she refutes wiping at her eyes. “It _is_ some grand inevitable now. And how could you even think that I _wouldn’t_ approach you now?”

“I told you,” he warns her. “Teenaged Draco was an insecure wanker. He’s going to take some convincing, and he’s not always going to say the right things, or even be who you need him to be.”

“Good thing I like a challenge then.”

His shoulders slump, something like defeat, something like relief.

She inches closer to him again, bringing their bodies flush, reaching up a hand to cup his cheek. The skin there is rough again with stubble, and she struggles once again to reconcile the boy she knew with the man standing in front of her. “We won’t end here,” she promises him.

“If you say so,” he whispers.

It’s much too early to say it’s love. All the rational parts in her brain tell her so. But as Draco slowly backs her into his room, strips her bare and lays her back on the bed, kissing her all over and stealing her breath, there doesn’t seem to be any room left for rationality.

****

XXX

Only McGonagall, Susan and a representative from both the Arithmancers and the Unspeakables come down to the lake to see her off again. She and Draco already said their goodbyes in private, whispered farewells punctuated by kisses so passion-filled they stole all her reason. If he'd come down to the lake, too, watched her as the Arithmancers and Unspeakables sent her off, she's not sure she could have left.

Hermione wears the Time Turner around her neck. It’s much larger than the Turner she wore during her third year, with more and bigger rings to better fine-tune twelve years of travel.

She listens as the Unspeakable talks her through proper Time Turner procedures: tells her there’s no failsafe if the tool goes wrong, that if it does work, she will be incredibly ill for a few hours after arriving back, that she is to destroy it as soon as she is able.

When Susan pulls her into a hug, Hermione resolves to reach out to the girl when she goes back. She’s proven to be a wonderful friend and a trustworthy confidante; Hermione thinks they could be friends in any time. When she tells Susan this, Susan blushes and looks down at the ground, like she isn’t sure what to make of the promise. 

Then McGonagall pulls her into a quick hug, whispering a farewell into her ear and making her promise to make it back to her time safely, even though there’s no possible way Hermione could guarantee such a thing.

Then she’s alone on the lake shore, watched by a captivated audience who watch as she shakily takes the Turner in hand and carefully turns it as ascribed by the Unspeakable: first the ring for the years, then the months, then the weeks.

The surroundings waver and blur as time moves around her.

****

XXX

The Time Turner drops her at the same north shore of the Black Lake she vanished from so long ago. Between the thud of her landing and the stabbing pain between her eyes, Hermione isn’t sure she can even move. The journey must have killed her. And after everything she just went through, too.

She doesn’t know how much time passes before she manages to haul herself upright. Dizziness sways her in a dance as she falls back against a tree, gasping for breath and blinking the black spots from her eyes. If she didn’t already know what might happen, she’d kneel over the water and splash her face. The icy temperature would have to shock her out of her stupor.

After she’s steadied herself, she grabs her shoes and wand from the shore—the other her must have already fallen into the portal—and trudges herself up the gentle sloping hills towards the castle. She still sways, still has to brace herself on tree trunks, and by the time she makes it back to the main doors, she falls to a bench and squeezes her eyes shut to stop the world from spinning.

“Hermione!” 

She finds herself wrapped in four warm, familiar arms, breathing in the forgotten scents of leather, broom polish, grass and sunshine. She closes her eyes and lets herself melt into the warmth, tears prickling at her eyes and an odd sort of melancholy pulling at her heart.

“We couldn’t find you anywhere!” Harry tells her, hands still braced firmly around her shoulders in a grip sure to bruise. “You never came back for dinner and we were so worried!”

Hermione smiles and happily lets her best friends maul her. She could only think in abstracts when she was gone about how much she missed Harry and Ron, but the reality of it is crashing into her now. These two boys are her beating heart, her wand arm. Without them, she doesn’t know where she would be.

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” she whispers into Harry’s shoulder. Both boys squeeze her just that little bit tighter. “I went for a little… swim.”

Both boys pull back, looking at her with curious expressions. “A swim?” Ron repeats. “In the lake? In this weather?”

“I know,” she says, shaking her head. “Silly idea, wasn’t it?”

****

XXX

The following morning, as they huddle down to the train station to head back to London, Hermione half-listens to Harry and Ron hammer out a plan to meet somewhere next week—the details are never concrete with those two—and keeps an eye out for that familiar head of blond hair.

She feels the familiar weight of his gaze on her before long. When she finds him in the crowd, staring at her, he quickly averts his eyes and turns back to his circle of friends. She never asked him about his friends before. Maybe she should have asked about him more about himself. Maybe that’s something she can correct now.

His eyes find her again, meeting her gaze head on. He doesn’t look away this time, and neither does she. She quirks her lips in a tiny smile and lifts a hand to wave at him.

He looks baffled for a moment, then returns the smile (smaller) and the wave (more discreet). It isn’t much, but when they hold each other’s gaze like a promise, it feels like the start of something wonderful.

**Author's Note:**

> I had plans to add more to this story, so while this is listed as 'complete', watch this space...
> 
> On the off chance that this is the last fic I post for the year, I'd like to wish all my readers a very happy holiday season and a safe and prosperous new year. I've got some stuff in the pipeline (both for HP and some brand spankin' new stuff for the Hunger Games fandom!) so I'll see you all bright and early 2017 :)
> 
> In the meantime, I'm ally147writes on Tumblr. I post mostly book reviews and stuff I find amusing, but I have fun doing it! Come say hello!


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